Tenner
by strixx
Summary: Sherlock Holmes knows nothing of kindness until a stranger starts throwing ten pound notes into his violin case every time he passes by, and, as usual, Sherlock knows nothing of keeping himself out of trouble. Those two things would end up having more to do with each other than he'd like.
1. Chapter 1

**Here's the summary again, for those of you on mobile:_  
Sherlock Holmes knows nothing of kindness until a stranger starts throwing ten pound notes into his violin case every time he passes by, and, as usual, Sherlock knows nothing of keeping himself out of trouble. Those two things would end up having more to do with each other than he'd like._**

* * *

The first time it happened was on a Monday, a day when people would usually just walk right on past him with their heads down and their eyes turned away for the simple fact that it was the start of a new week. A man with curly hair – whom Sherlock deduced had just gotten a new job, considering his overly proper state of dress and the fact that he'd never seen him walking this way before – had dropped a whole ten pound note into his violin case amongst a bunch of coins. He'd smiled wide and genuine as he did it.

Sherlock had eyed up that smile perplexedly when his song ended, soon just nodding his head in thanks when he'd realised that the other was not about to falter under his scrutiny. They were roughly the same height.

He had stared after the guy as he walked away.

That was not the usual, by far.

He _usually_ only got pitied stares and rough, hushed words thrown in his direction, sometimes a few pence added to the mix between sporadic, near weekly violin sessions out on his self-proclaimed section of sidewalk.

He _usually_ didn't get a damn cent on warmer days when his sleeves were short enough to expose his skin. Though he supposed that was his own fault, he never really did much to hide the track marks visible in the crook of his elbow, trailing up his forearm, on his wrists.

Enough said, Sherlock's life was not one of ease. At least not at the moment. He was, as his brother had remarked, 'not in a good place'. The issue was that he found everything to be a waste of time unless it was personally interesting and/or potentially life-threatening, and university lectures fell under neither of those categories while a particular substance fell under both.

After one more performance and a few more pity pounds thrown in his case, he decided that it was time to pack up his instrument, slipping that one pink-gray note out and into a pocket. Perhaps he'd use it for a nice(ish) dinner, who knew.

As he carried his violin up the old, withered steps of a familiar building that was not his home, he resolved that he wasn't going to buy anything. He was just going to use the kid's bathroom to clean up. Nothing more, nothing less. He was welcome there, of course, along with a handful of other transients who filtered in and out on a daily basis, to either crash on spare mattresses or wash up or buy and occasionally sell his products.

The kid who owned the place was only nineteen and more successful than Sherlock had ever been at that age, with a whole business set up by himself with money to spare on his much lower income customers. For comparison, all Sherlock had been at nineteen was a tired, bored, melancholic disaster with chemistry homework.

He greeted Sherlock with a short wave as he placed the case on the ground. "Yo, I'm just saying, if you need a place to keep your violin again.."

"Yes." Sherlock nodded his head readily. The rest of that offer needn't be said, he knew what it was. "Yes, thank you." Last time he had spent the night there when nearly all of the mattresses had been claimed, Raph had allowed him to put his violin in his personal bedroom, just to make sure that it was safe while he slept. Apparently the kid had an affinity for instruments. Sherlock was thinking it was due to a younger sibling, and a few more words exchanged between them had proven it.

Talking to the kid – his full first name was Raphael – just put Sherlock on the fast track to self-destruction all over again, thoughts of that relatively nice dinner and the kind stranger who had attempted to make that possible thrown out the window.

So he bought his next hit. Why the fuck not, he deserved it.

He took one of the sterilized, individually wrapped needles for himself that Raph had stocked away in the bathroom, undid his belt, then sat down on an available mattress and laid back with a deep, deep sigh.

**xxxxx**

Waking up the morning after felt more like his body was in an advanced stage of decay, like he'd be able to just peel the skin off of his bones if he tried hard enough.

He hated it, he hated when this happened, however used he was to waking up in such a state. He always knew that it was coming, of course, he was just never fully prepared for the fallout. He groaned as he rolled over on his side, reaching a hand out to fiddle with the belt he'd left on the other side in the middle of the night.

The needle was gone, he assumed Raph took it away for him. Raph liked to keep his place relatively safe, and that meant cleaning up needles that could potentially cause a safety hazard to others. Raph was a good guy with a mixed moral compass, and Sherlock could appreciate that.

He stood up and stretched his arms above his head, joints creaking and popping as he took inventory of the other homeless around him with bleary, sandy eyes. He was up early, it appeared. Everybody was fast asleep, morning light only just starting to stream through the blinds.

Yawning, he set about getting ready. He had an obligation to look somewhat presentable for where he was going, after all.

**xxxxx**

So that's how he found himself later that night in a seedy, smoky bar wearing the only nice button-down he owned. He was surrounded at a table by older men in business attire who had just gotten off of work, playing poker with crystal glasses of brandy at their elbows and cigarettes hanging from their mouths.

Sherlock had always been a master of probability.

He rarely lost a game.

With cards in one hand and a cigarette in the other, Sherlock almost always ended up with a large stack of chips in front of him, being rewarded with the pot in the middle of the table by the end of it. He ate well on those nights, but they had to be few and far between. It wasn't in good taste to sweep the floors with them any more frequently than that, and it was dangerous above all else. Dangerous in a way he'd think twice about when the game involved certain players.

That never stopped him from gaining a reputation, though. He was stopped by a man who he recognised as being named James Armitage – obviously mafia – on his way out of the bar with the back of a hand. Then he gestured back to the table he'd come from. "Hey, kid, the talk around here tells me you're pretty good at that."

Sherlock shrugged in response. His filter had wised up out of necessity, and most of the time he just couldn't be bothered to answer redundancies. This James had to have been watching him, he could gather that information himself.

"Next time you stop by, just find me and we'll have it out, all right?"

Sherlock glanced him over. He was always up for a challenge, and that's exactly what he looked like. "All right."

**xxxxx**

The second time it happened was on a rainy day. Sherlock never had to spend lots of money on food, given that he was rarely ever hungry to begin with. He was thinner than he'd been just six months ago, for sure, but that had more to do with the state of his mood than anything else.

His hands were shaking from malnutrition now as he ran his bow over violin strings. He could barely keep himself on his feet anyway. This time it didn't have to do with the state of his mood, he'd just been unable to come across any sort of money for it within that time span. It'd been, what, three solid days without a bite to eat? Even _he_ couldn't survive like that, he was only human, after all.

He had just dismounted his instrument and he was sitting down with his back pressed up against slippery brick when the man from before passed by.

He took a look over Sherlock, and Sherlock looked back at him from under rain-soaked bangs that were peeking out of his hood. His expression was nonjudgmental and curiously soft, offering another brief smile moments later as he fished out a wallet from a pocket on the inside of his jacket. Sherlock mused that it was a smart move, keeping something valuable like that in a place like that.

He held another tenner directly out to Sherlock, now that his violin case had been closed to prevent water from ruining the velvet lining. Coins still laid on top of it.

Sherlock didn't make any move to take it.

The curly haired guy adjusted his stance, wiping rain from his eyes. "Look, I promise I'm not trying to psych you out, just take it." Again, Sherlock was a master of probability, he knew that the chances of that happening were very low considering that the guy had given the same amount just the other day and had seemed more than happy to do so.

Sherlock still didn't make any move to take it.

The guy tisked, but there was no further comment as he carefully laid the note on Sherlock's curled-up knees. He stood there until a shaky hand came up to grasp the note. Relief flooded through him at the very touch, because he'd just been granted a few more days to live and he knew it very, very well. Sherlock avoided his gaze, sniffing in place of a verbal thanks.

Only then did the guy look pleased enough to continue on his way.

There were very few things that Sherlock didn't understand, and random acts of kindness were one of them.

**xxxxx**

The third time it happened was on a particularly bad day. Sherlock was walking down the busy streets of London, tinkering around with a plastic phone in his one hand with a look of utter disdain. Sherlock had woken up late that morning with it wrapped up nicely as a present, and he had half of a mind to go pay his dear brother a visit for _spying_ again.

After overextending the flip phone so that it snapped, he disposed of one half in one trash bin and the other half in a different one a few blocks down. Just to spite him.

Keep in contact, yeah right, more like make it easier for a _certain person of uninterest_ to track him. He knew the game that Mycroft was trying to play, and he wasn't about to play. He didn't need help.

Setting up in his usual spot took half as long as it normally did, propping the case open next to his feet as he stood there with the instrument pressed up against his neck, bow poised over the strings in preparation. He needed an outlet for all of this ridiculous emotion, badly, so when he started to play it shouldn't have been any surprise that the song coming out of his strings was something quick and sharp and hard edged with his lips pressed in a thin line.

He was only somewhat aware of change being dropped in his case every so often. That he was used to, people stopping in their tracks for as long as it took them to retrieve coins out of their pockets or purses, then going off to let the rest of the song fade with the distance. But when that one particular guy came by and placed another note in his case and proceeded to stick around, Sherlock was acutely aware.

He ended the song just as abruptly as the rest of it had been.

A singular applause greeted him, and his eyes snapped over to the source: that smiling curly-haired stranger who liked to leave him tenners, who else would it have possibly been? The guy proceeded to shove his hands in his pockets, glancing down at the ground where he was nudging a pebble with his shoe. "That's really cool, you know, because you don't see lots of busking violinists," he tried.

Sherlock shook his head at him meanly, exasperatedly, unable to help the eye roll that followed. It was a way to tell him to just drop the damn conversation where it was, because he didn't want to hear it. When the other opened his mouth again and lifted his hands in defense, Sherlock supposed that he was going to hear it whether he liked it or not.

"Honest to god, it's a compliment. I play an instrument too, and you're good at that," he tried again.

"I have to be." Sherlock rested his violin carefully against the brick wall behind him, doing nothing to hide the bite in his tone. He was grimacing, watching the guy rub his chin in contemplation. A piano player by the looks of it. He just wasn't in the mood to hear the other's voice again. Before he got the chance to get out whatever trite thing that was on his mind, he snapped, "You have a job to be at. That means you can _go_ now."

He blinked. "Oh, ehm." Then he brought a wrist up to check his watch, and even through his snippy anger, Sherlock soaked up the look that crossed the other guy's face like a sponge. The guy started back in the direction he was going in, moving quickly like he'd just been jump-started. "Wow, you're right. Thank you!" he called over the sound of a busy sidewalk. Then he waved goodbye when he realised just how far away he'd gotten.

Sherlock ignored him.

What an idiot.


	2. Chapter 2

Nothing had been going right for him in recent days.

It had been two months or so since Sherlock had that first encounter with James Armitage back at the bar. That was an estimated guess because he didn't know for sure how long it'd been; time was relative when all you were required to know was how often you ran out of money.

And Sherlock _had_ run out of money. Completely high and dry, this time with a broken violin peg keeping him there. He estimated that it would cost somewhere around forty, forty-five pounds for a replacement piece, which was a bit steep, and he had no way of getting that money without his violin in one piece. He was sure that he could've come up with a composition without the use of his A string, yet that didn't seem half as much fun as a different alternative he had in mind.

If he was going to live his life on the illegal side of things, he might as well go the whole nine yards.

With that logic in mind, he found himself back at the bar.

Smoke hung heavily in the air as it always did, the lights were dimmed as they always were and chatter from men who'd just gotten off of work filled the room as it always did. It was familiar, and it was exactly what Sherlock was looking for.

Finding Armitage hadn't been a challenge. All he had to do was ask; he supposed that old saying had some truth to it, speak of the devil and he shall appear.

Sherlock scoffed. He was sat at a table that had been cleared out after the previous game had ended. Now it was just him and James, straight across from each other and locked in a stare down. They were shooting words back and forth, trying to come to an agreement when Sherlock had about enough of it and lowered his shoulders, giving him a dark tilt of the head to set the record straight. "_You_ challenged _me _to play big leagues, mind you, not the other way around." Then he bluffed straight to the guy's face: "_I_ only have fifty pounds to put on the table.. but that's not fun, is it?"

James folded his hands, leaning forward on his elbows and giving him a smirk from across the table. He shifted something around in his mouth; chewing tobacco. "You want to have fun, kid? Then go ahead and name your price."

Sherlock's lips twitched up in bemusement to mirror the older man's. He saw an opportunity, and he was going to take it no matter how much the logical, more street-wise side of his brain was kicking and screaming protesting against it. His filter may have smartened up, but it wasn't foolproof. He clicked his tongue. "Mm. Two grand of yours, all or nothing."

"All or nothing," Armitage repeated in agreement.

With cards in hand, two thousand pounds of Armitage's money laid out in the middle of the table between them, and utterly blank looks on either of their faces, the game started. A crowd was gathered around them, he was sure that they were all placing their bets. He idly wondered how many of them were counting him out. How many of them saw him as nothing more than a poor, desperate addict looking to win it big.

Again, not a thing had been going in his favour as of late, so when that blank expression refused to give way and a stack of his chips was already lost, Sherlock found himself out of his depth, further away from shore than he'd predicted. It was dangerous. And it'd only taken him a few plays to realise it, even if nothing about this arrangement ran him at risk.

That was, to say, nothing aside from himself.

Sherlock was never one to be motivated by money. Or, at least, that was how he used to be when he had access to the family funds and money didn't have to be a concern.

Because now, all Sherlock could think about was the things that he'd be able to do with that two grand. There was a whole list.

So he mucked it up. Meaning, he'd done some sleight of hand business to ensure he'd get the cards he needed when he needed them. It was simple enough, of course; Sherlock had always been very dexterous, cheating in that manner was something of a second nature to him.

Until it came down to the final draw, the showdown.

He placed down his three of a kind and Armitage placed down his two pair.

He'd won, and it grew quiet; it felt as if the entire room was suspended in awe. He caught Armitage's eye, and the guy nodded his head. Then Sherlock was giving the other his best shit-eating grin as he stood up to collect his pot, stuffing it all in his pockets and murmuring, "Well, it was a pleasure doing–"

"James, I saw 'im hiding that four of clubs!"

Then the room descended into chaos.

The rational side of his brain forced him to stick around for an extra minute as they tried checking the pile of discarded cards for any indication (he knew that was impossible to determine). It was also the rational side of his brain that forced him to flee as soon as somebody from the crowd came forward with a video they'd taken on their phone. He wasn't stupid, he saw the line of displeasure in his forehead. He knew he'd been caught.

For now he would have to appreciate the little things in life. At least he'd gotten a head start on them.

**xxxxx**

After sprinting through alleyways, tumbling over some trash bins, and hopping over wire fences to throw off his quite impressive pursuers, Sherlock was making a mad dash across a lamp lit street. He only allowed himself a single glance backwards. Through the darkness he could make out two figures on the opposite side of a fence.

Shit. They saw him.

He turned around just in time to see– handlebars.

He collided into the front wheel of a bike. At least the person had come to a stop. He tried gripping something, anything for support as he fell, yet all he managed was snagging a sleeve and that barely did any good.

He hit the ground on one hand and a knee. He was stunned in place and blinking rapidly as he stared up at the biker. Everything about him was working a mile a minute, he recognised that face instantly.

"You again? Why are you on a _bike_?" he exclaimed, breathless and incredulous as he scrambled to his feet. The redheaded guy was saying something, something unimportant and ridiculous like_ 'What are you even doing? Do you know how crazy...'_ Sherlock wasn't paying attention.

Those other guys just hopped the fence.

He cut him off mid-sentence and hopped on the back of the guy's bike, standing on the metal bars. "All right! Whatever, yes, I'll explain later! Now go!"

They took off without further protest. His hands were placed on tensed, flexing shoulders as they zipped down sidewalks. Blood was rushing in his ears; even if the ride was completely silent between them it felt like the loudest five minutes of his life.

Sherlock glanced backwards as they turned a corner. He didn't see them.

Then he relaxed a bit, letting his eyes close. He was safe, they were safe.

**xxxxx**

"Oh my god."

Sherlock expertly ignored the guy as they dismounted the bike in front of a building. Now that they weren't in a rush, it felt particularly weird to be moving at a normal, unfrenzied pace in an environment that felt more safe than he'd ever been in his adult life. He assumed that this nondescript building he was staring up at was the guy's flat, the one he'd just gotten a couple months ago at the start of his new job– whatever job one would be able to secure with a degree in botany.

The sudden change of pace threw him off; everything seemed too quiet, too calm as they stood under the soft glow of a porch light. It was surreal to even be standing there. The guy was panting with his back against the wall, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "Oh my god, I really just did that."

Sherlock tisked at him in the middle of trying to catch his own breath, as if that conveyed everything he had to say. It sort of did.

He didn't know how it happened, but soon he was inside and standing next to a kitchen chair that he had refused to sit in. He was eating a sandwich that the redheaded guy had prepared – who had introduced himself as Victor – while his wrist got inspected with much more care than he was expecting. A glass of water sat on the table, just within reach.

All of the attention was foreign. He didn't understand it. He didn't understand why things were only just starting to go right for him now, thanks to the bleeding heart of a virtual stranger, because what had he ever done to deserve any of this? Really?

He watched Victor as he worked on his wrist, wrapping some sort of flexible material around it. The only sounds to be heard were the evened out breaths of his companion and the low hum of a television in the background.

When he finished and took a step back, Sherlock took it upon himself to finally sit in the chair that had been offered to him. He reached for the glass of water that was at his elbow, sipping at it all nonchalant and keeping his eyes straight ahead to a tiny square clock that was hanging above Victor's cabinets. Took note of the time. Took note of the little give-aways that this was a new flat with a new owner. Took note of the way that the clock was ever so slightly askew; Victor had thought that he'd been able to eye it up. Clearly, he'd been wrong.

He rubbed at the wrist that Victor had just finished tending to.

"So, ehm, are you going to tell me why you were running?"

Sherlock broke his stare on the clock, bringing it down to regard pale green eyes. It took him all of two seconds to get his head back on the right track. "Are you going to tell me why you were on a bike?" he parroted.

"What, I can't go biking?"

"It's fucking ten o'clock!" A rare smile broke out over his face in surprise.

"Then what the hell were you doing, running for your life _at fucking ten o'clock_," Victor shot back, his mouth parted and smiling as well, turning his body to the side in just as much surprise as the other.

Sherlock rubbed once more at the bandaging with the knuckles of his other hand that was now holding a half eaten sandwich. He paused, contemplating how entirely unsatisfied his stomach felt for a moment, before just shoving the rest of it in his mouth. A long beat of silence later, in the midst of chewing, he attempted to speak through it: "I hustled an important guy in an important poker game."

"What?"

Hustling wasn't necessarily the best way to put it; he'd straight up cheated at it then stole the guy's money, but Victor didn't seem like the type who needed second-by-second details. Sherlock kept him in suspense, holding up his finger to pause Victor where he was until he was finished chewing. He swallowed. "Poker. Hustling. Mafia. Not a good combination," he said impatiently as if he were repeating something he'd screamed at Victor rather than spoken through a sandwich.

Victor apparently took that information in stride. His elbows rested back on the counter top while Sherlock's feet tapped against yellow-checkered linoleum tile, the both of them bathed in a sterilized, sickly circle of light. Victor tilted his head, his voice going soft. "If you need a place to stay, you know, you can always hide out here for a bit."

Sherlock, meanwhile, had been examining the tattered, dirty shoes on his feet and how they looked against the backdrop of Victor's prim, bleach-cleaned kitchen.

He didn't belong there.

So Sherlock pursed his lips as he stood and wiped imaginary crumbs off of his trousers. "Mmm, no thanks." He might as well have started heading for the door with the way things appeared to be heading; the warm, open look on Victor's face wasn't something that he found himself capable of staring at for too long.

He turned on his heel and began trekking back through Victor's sitting room in order to get to the front door. The whole place was littered under large potted plants and random pieces of paper with random, hastily done scribbles on them; it felt more suffocating than anything.

Flinging the door open, Sherlock glanced over his shoulder to find that Victor had followed him out into the hallway. He groaned low in his throat.

By the time they were both outside, shrouded in darkness with only a nearby streetlight turned on, Victor was rushing to catch up with him. He even followed him out onto the middle of the empty road, but Sherlock just kept going.

"Hey, hey, I just want to help! I'm offering you a place to sleep tonight so you don't get yourself killed, do you understand that? That's the only reason, and I'm glad I made that change in my routine.. you should be, too! It's not like I go biking around looking for you all hours of the night in case you might need–"

"Oh my god, Victor!" Sherlock whipped around to face him, arms held out wide. "Leave me aloooooone," he said, drawn-out and frustrated across the space of gravel between them. He was so done with Victor, so done with all of this niceness. He was too prideful to accept any form of help that he hadn't sought out himself, was what it all came down to. There was a certain shame in it that he'd gotten practice in avoiding for _years_ thanks to Mycroft.

Sherlock was trying really hard to not draw comparisons between the two. "I don't know what motivations you've got for this, but I do know I don't need your pity, and I don't need your money either." He felt the heavy weight of the money in his pocket. It was reassuring. What he was saying was true.

Victor paused for a second, then he raised his hands in defeat as he backed off. A car's headlights had just appeared over the horizon, so he shook his head, just shrugging it off. "Fine, next time you run in front of my bike, I'm not helping."

Sherlock's reaction was practically a study in unconcern. He clicked his tongue. "Noted."


	3. Chapter 3

As Sherlock climbed up the steps to Raphael's flat, taking in the chipped corners, broken handrails, and peeling wallpaper, he practically felt the money weighing him down, burning a hole in his pocket. He knew that it'd done more than just that; it'd also burned quite a few bridges for him along the way, and he didn't think this was something that would ever be extinguished.

It seemed as if all money knew how to do was make people burn.

He was greeted by Raph as he came in the door, only catching a glimpse of the guy sitting at his kitchen table sorting through some kind of paperwork. Sherlock's mind was intent on one thing and one thing only when he followed the voice back in there, the both of them standing around and chatting for a few minutes.

With Raph, he knew the stupid small talk was more of a formality than anything for when a plastic bag would be handed off to him, as it inevitably was. He'd been getting more and more haphazard with his purchases, for which he decided that he couldn't be blamed considering how shit things had been going for him, but now, with a newfound sense of clarity to his actions, Sherlock felt as if he had to make some sort of penance for it.

After all, Raph had always provided for him whenever he didn't have quite enough money, and Sherlock had always promised him, sooner or later. He shifted from foot to foot, sparing a glance behind him in the general direction of the other homeless, where they were just out of sight, but Sherlock could see the rows of mattresses and sunken cheeks all the same. "Look, I ran into some money recently, so I want you to take this-" he counted out seven-hundred pounds "-and I want you to know that this me paying you back."

It'd actually been the very first item on that mental checklist Sherlock had made back at the bar. It'd been one of the main reasons why he'd disregarded the warning signs flashing right before his eyes as he'd fled from the place.

He still had well over one-thousand for himself either way; he didn't see it as too large of a loss.

Raph thanked him, and Sherlock could feel the sincerity of his words in the way he held their handshake. "And hey, man, I'll even let you put your stuff my bedroom again, just take it with you when you leave in the morning."

"It's appreciated." They nodded at each other.

Soon enough, Sherlock hid away the rest of that hard-earned money inside his violin case, which had already taken up a residence against Raphael's closet door.

All he could think about as he laid out on another mattress, sleeves rolled up as he flexed to find a vein, was the myriad other things he'd soon be checking off of his mental list. He needed that violin piece, obviously, and perhaps it was even time to treat himself to a set of high-quality strings. He needed a good breakfast, and a good lunch, and an even better supper. He needed new shoes, new clothes, new equipment for his forensics experiments, new everything. He needed to try a speedball at some point. And he was actually going to get those things.

There was something freeing about spending money that wasn't technically yours. He didn't feel bad about wanting to indulge himself, not as if he ever really had.

He fell asleep that night warmed by the presence of a room full of other bodies in similarly altered mental states, the blood singing in his veins.

** xxxxx  
**

A few hours later an angry, thickly accented voice forced him into consciousness, barking demands at people. It was relentless, even switching between two different languages mid-sentence. All of the commotion was making his head throb as if nails were being screwed into his temples.

It was Raphael yelling at them. He'd always known that the guy had a mixed moral compass that always ended up pointing towards logic, sometimes overly so, and what was going on was absolutely a testament to that. He was walking up and down the rows of mattresses, waving people along and tapping them on their shoulders as he went. "Until I know who went in my room, y'all can get the fuck out. I don't care where you go, you just can't stay here... Yeah I mean it, pack your shit up and get out of my house."

Sherlock cracked a sticky eye open to find the homeless around him gathering their possessions.

That couldn't mean anything good.

Sherlock's body was standing upright before he had a chance to really register it, stumbling towards him with a hand pressed hard against the side of his head. He didn't even want to think about how he must've looked, hunched over before his dealer, clothes practically hanging off of him with his stare bleary and unfocused. "Raph-"

"Shezza, man, one of the guys trashed my room last night. Looks like all they took was the money in your violin case, though." It took him a moment to realise that the man was addressing him. All he did was blink at him, trying to unstick his eyelids. "Maybe you can track them down, I know you're good at that kind of stuff."

Sherlock nodded his head in acknowledgment, rubbing at the itching track marks in the crook of his arm as he watched Raph go off to talk to a few other homeless, rushing them out with barely enough time to sling their bags over their shoulders. He was kicking them all out, every last one of them. Sherlock couldn't fault him for it, though, not entirely; his good will had been exploited. While he normally only let his usual, trusted buyers spend the night – the ones he knew would end up too drugged out on morphine to even move – it was really only a matter of time before either Raph forgot to lock the door behind him, or one of those customers grew a little too curious for their own good. Nobody was perfect.

Sherlock approached Raph again after he managed to collect himself, only moments later finding his voice. "I suppose you'll need me to leave as well."

"Yeah, I do. I don't know what to tell you, man, it just wouldn't be fair." Sherlock had to admit that he had a point there. So he took his violin case with him – that had been left forgotten on the floor after the money had been stolen out of it – and heaved a sigh. He was busy going over the events of the night before, any possible people who could've been around to eavesdrop on their conversation, but he was horrified to find that his memories didn't have any discernible timeline to them. If his thoughts were a painting, their colours had run together.

He stared aghast at some random point in the distance, trying to jog his brain into cooperating. It wasn't.

Because during the course of a single night, one of his biggest safe houses had gone up in flames, and there wasn't much of anything to be done about it. He felt as if he were walking over ashes as he made his way down the steps.

** xxxxx  
**

Sherlock preoccupied himself with trying to piece together the events of the night before, sitting in a corner of the public library and staring intently down at a book he wasn't reading as he did so. He was sat as if he were about to flee at any moment, though he knew that wasn't about to happen anytime soon. He didn't have anywhere to go.

Unless…

**xxxxx**

It was too dark for him to clearly see the task before him. The floor's overhead light was out, shrouding him in near total darkness with only scarce rays of artificial yellow streaming in from the window at the opposite end of the hall. He'd picked plenty of locks to know the standard motions for it, though, of course he'd be able to get in without a hitch, it'd just take a bit longer and run him at an even greater risk of getting caught by the other people on his floor if they just so happened to need to leave their flat at one in the morning.

He wasn't counting on it, honestly.

He held the door up to prevent it from creaking, slipping inside and not bothering to lock it behind him. He wasn't about to block one of his safest escape routes like that.

It had only been two days since the last time he'd stepped through that door. He hadn't expected it to look so vastly different, to the point where he was doubting if he'd broken into the correct flat, but as he went further in and his eyes began adjusting to the low light, he felt confident in leaving those doubts behind.

Walking through the living room was like making his way through a jungle, honestly, brushing aside leaves upon leaves as he went. He had only caught glimpses of the living room in the short amount of time he'd spent bumming around in the kitchen getting his arm wrapped up, but he definitely wouldn't have expected anything else.

Victor could be described in so many ways, not all of them in a positive light. Sherlock did admire his enthusiasm, if anything, because that was an area he'd been extremely lacking in himself. It wasn't that he disliked the other, per se, there were just so many other factors going into it; the assumption that he automatically needed a handout just because he didn't live in a flat, the way his brother had done basically the same thing in trying to help him, etcetera etcetera. It all hit a little too close to home for his liking.

He was quiet on his feet and even quieter settling down on the neutral-coloured sofa, nestling into a decorative pillow, eyes falling weary with exhaustion as he focused on the silhouettes of leaves through the darkness. He fell asleep with his backpack clutched to his chest and his violin case safely hidden in the bushes just outside the building.

Such was the life of a transient.

**xxxxx**

The next morning, well before sunrise, a tall, lanky figure could be seen rummaging through bushes that lined the front of Victor's building, light from a lamp post just barely reaching him as he walked away moments later with a violin case in hand. It'd been a flawless break-and-enter, if he did say so himself.

He knew Victor's work schedule rather well by now after observing from his busking spot so many times, and he was set to come back that very same night to crash on his sofa again. He'd even be able to sleep for a bit longer, for it was a Saturday. Didn't everybody sleep in on Saturdays?

In the meantime, though, he'd found a Very Good way to keep himself preoccupied.

Of course he'd have to take the long way for that, though, for that was just his life, it seemed. He lived on the alternate route, the darkened path lined with dead, withered trees, and filled with terrible sharp-toothed beasts lurking in every shadow. Now, it was non-metaphorically closer to early morning walks through back alleys and feeling like you had a gun trained on you the entire time, but, it is what it is.

Bart's Hospital was where Sherlock had spent most of the day after that, inside one of their labs that normally would only be reserved for practicing students, surrounded by clear glass tubes and white tile and shiny metal as he sat there, hunched over and intent on the work in front of him. Before he'd taken that alternate route, he'd been a university student, a chemistry major with too much on his mind and not enough outlets for them. He had more than enough outlets at the moment, especially with recent developments, that was all that mattered to him.

He had his violin case set atop the table in front of him while he dusted for fingerprints on the latch. There had to be _something_ there; he didn't expect too much out of the commonwealth to begin with, even less so out of a drug addict in need of a fix.

And yet he still wondered why people looked down their noses at him.

It wasn't too terribly hard for him to find a solid, unsmudged fingerprint on the case. Bart's had more than enough resources for those sorts of things. The only hard part would be breaking into the Met's database to find a match, but with Sherlock Holmes, nothing was impossible. That just wasn't a word in his dictionary.

**xxxxx**

There was a body struggling beneath him, a striped blue shirt riding up as Sherlock wrenched his arm back. A hand was knotted in the back of the guy's greasy hair, shoving his face down in the ground, each panicked breath sending a little dust cloud off to the side.

Enough said, Sherlock had found his guy.

Like many homeless, he hadn't been too hard to track, either. They all had their regular haunts, Sherlock included.

He pursed his lips up at the foggy afternoon sky. "... Apparently you're not competent enough to understand what I'm asking. Let me rephrase. I will ask you one more time, and _only_ one more time." His voice was passive, bored, even. This hadn't been his preferred method of interrogation, but the guy had brought it upon himself, in all honesty, he'd fled at the very mention of Raphael's flat. Not that he'd gotten very far. They were currently a bit tied up between two buildings, near a fence that he hadn't even been able to clear. Sherlock leaned in close to the other's ear as he grunted in discomfort, calmly murmuring each word individually, "What did you do with my money?"

The guy's breathing escalated for a moment before he just let out a long huff. His whole body seemed to deflate with that moment he'd finally conceded, though it took him a bit to actually get the words out. "I spent it, mate, okay? I fucking spent it, just let me up."

Asking for repayment from a drug addict? Yeah, right. Sherlock grimaced, wrenching on the guy's arm one last time before pushing off of him.

Fabulous. Simply fabulous.

Well, he figured, it had been worth a shot.

**xxxxx**

He was still in a poor mood about the whole thing by the time he got back to Victor's flat. The knowledge that he'd been royally screwed over in nearly every direction followed him, lingered around on his shoulders even as he clicked the door shut behind him. Finding the guy hadn't done much of anything to help him, all it did was give him a face and a name to store away for future reference.

Sherlock was not one who forgave, nor forgot.

But the sight of Victor's sofa with those silly little decorative pillows, knowing that things were going to be okay for the night, while the world was silent just outside the window and the stars tried to shine through the city sky? It made him want to forget. He didn't want to even think of the implications of that.

He crashed on a sofa that was not his own, nestled into his jacket and curled up in a ball on his side. It was as comfortable as he would ever be, and he was content with that. It was enough.

Hours later, his face was smooshed into a large embroidered carrot on one of Victor's silly pillows, snoring slightly.

Sherlock had never been a deep sleeper, mind you, he'd always been the type to be hyper-aware of his surroundings, even in rest. That was just the way his body functioned, all hours of the day, 24/7, especially ever since he'd kicked himself out of his family's good graces and he'd relegated himself to living out on the streets. Yet, when he only barely registered the sound of socked feet whispering along the floor, back and forth and back and forth in indecision, he was far too deep into unconsciousness to stir. He'd let himself go that night, he'd been confident that Victor would be sleeping in at least an hour and a half later than usual.

That was a miscalculation.

Something hard and bristly was whacked in his face.

"Get out! Get out get out get out!"

Sherlock's arms came up to protect his face.

That panicked mantra followed him as he scrambled up off the sofa, and he got swatted in his back a few times as he fled to the front door, tripping over potted plants along the way.

He felt like a mouse being shooed out the kitchen; he couldn't imagine it looking too different either.

He was shoved outside as soon as the door was opened. There was a moment of silence in which he assumed that Victor's brain was working overtime to make sense of it all, to recognise who exactly it was he'd found asleep on his couch.

"What the_ fuck _are you doing in my house!?" Victor scream-whispered at him after Sherlock had been effectively chased out of his flat, standing there in the hallway with a death grip on a broom. They were both panting, having a standoff there in the low, early morning light. The other's hair was sticking up in every direction, his expression disgruntled and still half-asleep, and despite himself, Sherlock found that dumb, sleepy, bedheaded look all sorts of adorable. It suited him well.

Sherlock blinked up at him like the answer was the most obvious thing in the world. "I needed a place to sleep."

"You could've just fucking asked!"

He paused to contemplate that. He supposed that he could have, if he'd bothered to just suck up his pride for a day or two and admit to Victor that he'd said the wrong things last time, but that wasn't the type of person he was, was it? Sherlock raised an eyebrow to the singular piece of clothing the other was sporting: plaid pyjama bottoms that were so long they pooled on the ground at his bare feet. He switched his gaze up rather innocently. If there was any better time to ask…

"Can I sleep here?"

"GET OUT!"

Sherlock couldn't believe that he got away from there without laughing. _That_ was a new feeling.


End file.
